Pro Bono In Action
Appellate Victory Allows Client to Remain in His Home for Now and Fight to Protect It
Pro Bono In Action
June 7, 2023
Our client’s mother, who suffered from dementia, entered into a predatory reverse mortgage in 2014. When she died in 2015, Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC filed a foreclosure action against our client and his mother—putting him at risk of eviction from his family home.
Winston attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the foreclosure complaint, which was denied by the circuit court in 2019 despite the fact that our client’s mother had been identified by the Department of Justice as a victim of a widespread mortgage fraud scheme that targeted elderly minority women in Chicago’s west side to enter into predatory reverse mortgages.
In response, Winston presented an affirmative defense that the mortgage was invalid because our client’s mother had been diagnosed with dementia before she signed the contract. The plaintiff filed a motion to strike the affirmative defense and a motion for summary judgment, which the court granted after oral arguments in March 2020.
The court also denied a subsequent motion for reconsideration in December 2020. After years of COVID-19-related delays, our client’s home was sold to the plaintiff in a foreclosure sale in February 2022 and the court approved the sale in a final order in July 2022.
Undaunted, the Winston team appealed. Chicago Associate Tom Neuner argued that the circuit court improperly struck the affirmative defense by looking beyond the pleadings and misapplying relevant Illinois procedural standards. The Illinois Appellate Court agreed and reversed and remanded the case back to the circuit court.
“The circuit court ruling deprived our client the ability to defend himself and subjected him to a life-altering consequence of losing his home. On remand, Winston hopes to prevail on a counterclaim to rescind the mortgage,” said Chicago Associate Tom Neuner.
The Winston team helping our client protect his home includes Michael Kreamer, Joe Motto, and Tom Neuner.
